When I search for “PieFed” on DuckDuckGo, I get the expected results. https://join.piefed.social/ is the first one, of course.

On Google, the first result leads to a 403, and the second one is a Reddit discussion. https://join.piefed.social/ is nowhere to be seen.

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[–] 27 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

Google search as a whole is just completly enshittified nowadays. I remember how i started to use alternatives like DDG or Ecosia 10 years ago and still switched back to Google in 50% of times because it just delivered the results i wanted. About 5 years ago or so Google search became slowly so shitty that i used it maybe twice a week. Nowadays months can go by without Google and when i try it out for a particular hard to find search query i'm always shocked how bad it had become. Like sometimes it doesnt fill even a single page and every single result is utter garbage.

So i'd say Google doesnt hate PieFed. Theye just hate their users and humanity itself probably too.

Edit: The annoying part is DDG and the like never got as good as Google in its golden age. They're just better than now in its shitty age. I sometimes really miss typing in the most vague query for a super niche subject and having the exact result i want without even scrolling. Those were the days.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    For some reason the first result I get is joinfediverse.wiki then reddit, then the AI stuff but it seems to know what PieFed is, then two hosting providers who offer piefed images and the rest of the page is various docker containers.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 child)

    You guys still use google ? 😂.

    Use of VPN ? DNS setting ?

    No problems here , last time i used google is almost 10 years ago

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    i remember when they even hid lemmy for a while.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago

    im pretty fine with us being under the radar google and any other corpo wise. although unfortunately I don't think we are.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (8 children)

    Google doesn't really operate any kind of social media, so I don't think so. My results from a incognito tab shows:

    1. jointhefedierse.wiki

    2. Reddit

    3. Piefed.world

    4. AI overview 🤢

    5. Piefed Patreon

    6. Piefed Codeberg

    7. Blorp iOS app

    8. Elena Rossini article about the threadiverse

    etc.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    And the first one only gives a 403.

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  • [–] 2 points 3 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] 1 point 3 months ago (5 children)

    Me as well. I wonder if it only fails in some geolocations, or conversely if OP is using a VPN that some anti-AI scraper feature has blocked the IP range in.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 2 months ago (3 children)

    Regular Vodafone Internet. No VPN.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (2 children)

    So weird. The only thing I know about networking is that the answer always turns out to be DNS (/s... I think? hrm, perhaps it really is the case? :-P)

    Maybe someone else "near" you (in the IP sense) used a similar address that triggered blocking of the entire range that includes you.

    Either way you could try playing around with a VPN, making sure to set it to a variety of different geolocations?

    But the fact that it sometimes works - for many of us - while sometimes not working, for others, is definitely odd.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 2 months ago (1 child)

    It's not really the point of my post. This site isn't officially related to PieFed and shouldn't be the first result of a search engine.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago

    Fair, though Rimu already addressed that (his anti-AI scraping countermeasures likely caused that), so I was offering the additional fact that the site worked for me rather than generating a 403 error as it did for you, and a way to further test why that error came about.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    Not really sure what you mean, OP. Every link seems to work okay:
    https://www.google.com/search?q=piefed

    E.g. top indexed link works for me over here: (but not you?)
    https://joinfediverse.wiki/PieFed

    That said, I love the concept of DDG, but sadly, it just doesn't return as robust a result as Google routinely does for me. 😕 I also used to use DogPile FWIW, which tapped a dozen+ search engines. Are they still around?

    I've also heard some good things about SearX search, again FWIW...

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